The Hot Springs star. (Hot Spings [Hot Springs], Dakota [Dakota Territory, i.e. S.D.]) 1886-189?, 1887-07-22

- veeeel made waterproof bv !
coas Of htumen and aoatinr on IN
Nile With tho infant laweiver Of ths
seWs on boarde What Il sondA crocn,
que should crunch ltps What Il sorne
g ne cattle wading In for : drink
loud sink itp Vessels Of war some.
unaes carry forty guns looking through
ne port holes. ready to open battle,
but that tiny craft ON the Nile seems
@ be armed with all the guns Of thun.
oer that bombarded Sinai at the law.
giving. On how fragile craft sailed
nov much OF historical importancei
Ihe parsonage at Epworth, England.
on IRE In the night, and the father
rushed through the hallway for the res.
cue OF his children. Seven children
are out and safe on the ground. but
one remains in the consuming build.
ing, That one wakes; and finding his
ocd on fire and the building crumblihQ
comes to the window and two peasants
make q ladder Of their bodies. one
peasan standing on the shoulders Of
the other, and down the human ladder
the boy descsndse
JOHN WESLEY.
II you would know how much de.
pended on that ladder of peasants ask
the millions Of Methodists ON both sides
OF the sea. Ask their mission stations
all round the world. Ask their hun
dreds Of thousands already assembled
to Join their founder. who would have
persisted but for the living stairs of
peasants shoulders.
An English ship stopped at Pitcairn
Island. and right In the midst of sur
rounding cannibalism aud squalor. the
passengers discovered a Christian col.
ony OF churches and schools and beau.
tiful homes and highest styleof religion
and civilization. For fifty years no
missionary and no Christian influence
had landed there. Why this oasis of
light amid u desert of heathendomP
Sixty years before a ship had met dis
aster, and one of the sailors, unable to
save anything else, went to his trunk
and took out q Bible which his mother
had placed there, and swan ashore,
the Bible held in his teeth. The book
was read on all sides, until the rough
and vicious population were wan
gelized, and a church was started, and
an enlightened commonwealth estab-
lished and the worlds history has NO
more brilliant. page than that which
tells of the Transformation of a nation
by one book. 1: did not seem of much
importance whether the sailor con-
tinued to hold the book in his teeth or
let it fall in the breakers, but upon
what small circumstance depended
what mighty results!
PRACTICAL INFERENCE.
There r no insignificances in our
lives. The minutest thing is part of
a magnitude. 1niinity is made up of
infinitesimals. Great things an ag-
gregation of small things. Bethlehem
manager. pulling on a star in
the eastern sky. One book in a
drenched sailors mouth the evangeli-
cation of q multitude. Orc boat of
papyrus on the Nile freighted with
events for all ages. Tho fate of Chris
tendon in q basket let down from a
window on the wall. What you do, do
we'll: Ifyou make rope make it strong
and true. for you know not how much
may depend on your Workmanship. II
you fashion a boat let it be water
proof, for you know not who may sail
in it. If you put a Bible in the trunk
Of your boy as he goes from home, let
it be heard in your prayers, for it may
have a mission as far-reaching as the
book which the sailor carried in his
teeth to the Pitcairn beach. The
plaincst mans life is IN island between
two eternitles-etrnity past ripping
against his shoulders, eternity to come
touching his brow. The casual, the
accidental. that which merely hap
pened SO. r parts of a great plan,
and the rope that lets the fugitive
apostle from the Damascus wall is the
cable that holds to its mooring the ship
of the church in the northeast storm Of
the centuries.
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